I started purchasing the minute I found out I was pregnant. (I'm horrible, I know.) I actually had a boys outfit and girls outfit ready when my BFF had her daughter in January. So, I took the boys outfit back, but kept the cutest blue sweatshirt material jacket - it works either way. And once I found out that we are expecting, I actually went back to Target and got 3 onesies - black with silver lightning bolts and red trim, $1.50 each. Figured they'd work either way.

When I found out that my now 4-yr-old son was a boy (I thought he was a girl) I used Retail Therapy to get my brain around it.
It's how I roll. (to quote my friend's 5 yr old.)

Did anyone watch the documentary "Babies?" It came out around two years ago, and it followed four families through the birth and first year of their baby's life. One family was from a nomadic tribe in Namibia, the Himba, and another was a very crunchy family from San Francisco.

The documentary's website features extensive interviews with each of the parents from the film. The Namibian mother's story was very interesting: when asked why she agreed to participate in the film, which represented an enormous intrusion in her way of life [the subjects weren't paid], she said it was because the documentary team agreed to build a medical clinic in her village, so the women could have a trained birth attendant-- maybe even a doctor-- and no longer have to give birth in their huts and lose babies.

The San Francisco mother wrote that she was so pleased to have a natural, drug-free homebirth attended only by an intervention-free lay midwife. Unfortunately her baby had some degree of oxygen deprivation and had to be rushed by ambulance to a local children's hospital, where she spent a few days in the NICU.

Could there be a starker contrast?

Homebirth in the US is almost exclusively the purvey of relatively well-educated, relatively affluent white women. They often cite birth practices in dirt-poor countries as a shining example of how things should be (after all the c-section rate is less than 5%!) and claim some kind of sisterhood with the world's poorest and most disenfranchised women. I personally feel this trivializes the struggle and pain of the mothers in these countries. Having helped deliver babies in a few African countries, in Haiti and in Nepal I cannot emphasize enough that these are hardly birth practices the mother is choosing. If she had the option of a clean, sterile hospital, a trained attendant, pain-eradicating medications, neonatal resuscitation, antibiotics, blood transfusion, surgical birth, etc they would absolutely take it.

I've seen it. I thought it was a really nice little film. Beautiful to watch.

I just had a conversation with a friend of mine the other day about this. She's the one I wrote about who had a dangerous home birth after 3 hospital births. After a few days being very shaken, she went back to extolling the virtues of natural home birth.

She and I run a non-profit organization that has to do with women and children an she suggested that unofficially, not as part of our platform but just casually in FB posts and such, we start encouraging women to look more at home birth. She saw the RickiLake documentary and had a lot to say about empowerment and woman-focused etc. I told her about the blogs Hurt By Home Birth and The Skeptical OB and the studies they reference, which you can read online. She told me basically that all of that was about profit and protecting the industry. So finally I just said, we have to agree to disagree.

If I talk about something like this at all it means I have spent a LOT of time reading, researching, and thinking about it. But she encouraged me to do some more research, and suggested the RickiLake documentary :-)

I finally told her I could not in good conscience encourage home birth. And if it became part of our message I would have a problem.

I started researching this subject when it became apparent to me that some of the things I had always been told "good moms" do, I might not be able to do. Because I am pre-hypertensive, even if I am able to lower my BP with exercise like I am trying to do, I am a good candidate for preeclampsia, and the stress of natural labor might be dangerous for me. I had about 80% (6 lbs.) of my breast tissue removed (reduction) so nursing might be impossible for me. Assuming I can conceive, I may not have the glowing patchouli-scented mama experience I am "supposed" to have.

We are incredibly blessed to live in places where we have options. Say what you will about how invasive and evil big bad Western medicine is, if I am able to conceive it will be because of Western medicine. If I am able to give birth safely it will probably be because of Western medicine.

I started researching this subject when it became apparent to me that some of the things I had always been told "good moms" do, I might not be able to do. Because I am pre-hypertensive, even if I am able to lower my BP with exercise like I am trying to do, I am a good candidate for preeclampsia, and the stress of natural labor might be dangerous for me. I had about 80% (6 lbs.) of my breast tissue removed (reduction) so nursing might be impossible for me. Assuming I can conceive, I may not have the glowing patchouli-scented mama experience I am "supposed" to have.

We are incredibly blessed to live in places where we have options. Say what you will about how invasive and evil big bad Western medicine is, if I am able to conceive it will be because of Western medicine. If I am able to give birth safely it will probably be because of Western medicine.

This really resonated with me, Mrs.H. I'm a mom whose BP was borderline high in both pregnancies. It went up (not dangerously) at 37 wks, and I was induced at 38w with Willow, and 38w1d with Veda. I would have liked to have natural, intervention free births, but the interventions kept me and my babies safe. After having Willow, breastfeeding was a major (MAJOR) struggle, and I found myself struggling with "the baby blues". It wasn't diagnosed officially as PPD, and it certainly wasn't an extreme case, but I really had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that I needed to bottle feed. I just assumed I would breast feed, that's what good moms do, right??

Yesterday morning, before I read your post, I saw this on facebook, and thought I would share.

Encouragement for moms, and a reminder to respect each other and the choices we make:
Good moms breastfeed.
Good moms formula feed.
Good moms vaccinate their kids.
Good moms don't vaccinate their kids.
Good moms co-sleep.
Good moms use cribs.
Good moms have hospital births.
Good moms have home births.
Good moms adopt.
Good moms have natural births.
Good moms have epidurals.
Good moms have c-sections.
Good moms have 10 kids.
Good moms have 1 kid .
Good moms use cloth diapers.
Good moms use disposable diapers.

Being a mom, to me, as someone who's trying hard to be one :-) is about being a mom. Y'know? Loving your child, kissing boo boos, telling them you're proud of them. It's not about the choices you make but why you make them. That's my opinion, anyway. :-)